Episode 6: Fearful

Former detective Ron Blackshaw breaks his silence to reflect on critical aspects of the police case, 40 years after charging Ray with Ros's murder. Ray told friends, neighbours, work colleagues and teenager Donna that Ros had cancer and might die. Ros and her doctors told a very different story. A former neighbour of Ray and his first wife Jeanette speaks publicly for the first time about helping Jeanette flee the family home. Peter and Yvonne Dixon "call bullshit" on Ray's claims their neighbour Vin McKenzie supplied the strychnine that killed Ros. They say Vin went to his grave heartbroken from the smear. Rex's reasons for relentlessly investigating Ros's death become clearer. Subscribers hear new episodes of The Poisoned Wife first. Listen atthepoisonedwife.com https://www.theaustralian.com.au/topics/the-poisoned-wife-podcast, in The Australian’s app or search for The Poisoned Wife on Apple Podcasts to connect your subscription. Join the conversation and hear more from Hedley Thomas inThe Poisoned Wife Podcast Official Discussion Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/thepoisonedwifepodcast/ on Facebook Do you know more? Contact the team at [email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Listeners are advised that this podcast contains coarse language and adult themes. The Poisoned Wife is a podcast investigation brought to you by me, Headley Thomas and The Australian. Subscribers to The Australian hear episodes first on The Australian's app at thepoisonedwife.com and Apple Podcasts.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Every single piece of paper I got about this case you have now got.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  He would have known that she would have died a really painful death.

• 0:43Speaker 03

  She always wanted to be a mother, always.

• 0:47Speaker 04

  I didn't do it. I had nothing to do with Rosalyn's death.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  I was a 16-year-old girl who had a crush on an older married man. I just think it's all so cruel.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  How would you have been trying to protect him?

• 1:10Speaker 00

  The news of a dramatic turn in the investigation by homicide detectives spread quickly. It was the evening of July 4. Ray and Roz McQueen's near neighbour, Yvonne Dixon, heard about it when she answered the phone at home. Yvonne made a handwritten note at the time and she's shared it with us.

• 1:32Speaker 05

  Friday, July 4, 1986, Alan Cronk rang to say Ray had been charged at 8.30. It was on the 10.30 news. Remanded in custody until court on Monday.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  At the end of the previous episode, you heard Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Blackshaw bring the hammer down on Roz's husband, Ray McQueen. By the end of the questioning of Ray McQueen in the Bendigo Police Station, the experienced homicide detective must have decided that the evidence satisfied the significant step he was about to take. He must have concluded that he had enough circumstantial evidence to justify a murder charge. But was the bringing of that charge overly hasty? Or was it appropriately and even strategically well timed?

• 2:23Speaker 00

  From the records we've seen, Ron Blackshaw had arrived in Bendigo three days earlier with detectives including Mick Furlong from the homicide squad in Melbourne. The murder investigation had effectively started a week earlier in the historic gold mining city of Bendigo and the little community of Lockwood. Because it was the toxicology test results which triggered the surprise June 25 visit by Bendigo detectives to Ray McQueen. Ron Blackshaw lives happily in Queensland these days.

• 2:59Speaker 06

  Why, the facts emerged certainly, quite stronger and stronger. And Mr. McQueen stood out as the only person of interest. And I'm not out to get anyone to start with. My view is to get to the truth. His wife didn't have a cancer problem. She'd consciously gone off the pill. She wanted a son. That's what she was hoping for. He goes around and makes her feel very, very insecure. She was concerned and not only concerned as a wife would be, she's for Christ's sake pregnant and highly vulnerable.

• 3:40Speaker 06

  Her concern is completely that she might be losing her husband. And he is being totally unreasonable in his attention, obvious attention, he's overt attention to just one young girl. It was highly provocative. It was humiliating. It was brutal. It was barbaric. Particularly in, as I say, her vulnerability at the time. People fall into different psychological categories. You've got a clear example here, in my view anyway, of a 30-plus young man approaching

• 4:23Speaker 06

  a middle age, married and with the destination of being locked down in his family life. It didn't suit him anymore. But opportunity arrives for a young teenager. She's interested in him. He's flattered. He wants to take advantage of the situation. You've got a character here who has wicked thoughts in his head. Life goes on. He changes direction. To me, that's a psychological direction. He's succumbed to it and then he's put a plan into action.

• 5:04Speaker 06

  That's succinctly what I think. I did know of strychnine and I knew that it was a particularly volatile, nasty death and very, very active death with the convulsions. So it's not an instant death, not a peaceful death. It is a monster of a death. And the child was there with her. This bloke was selfish. He wanted to get away with it and get on with his life. He wasn't even a good liar. And you're talking about the personality of the person. The personality of the person, I thought he was a worm. Would I think he's a weak bastard? Absolutely. That's what I think about it.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Donna discloses that she's also in love with Ray. She candidly tells you and police that she does want to go into a de facto relationship with him. She wants to move into that house. It's a plan that Ray puts to her within a short time of his wife's death. How important are her statements that were taken from the teenager?

• 6:15Speaker 06

  Very important. But Rosalyn's gone. Let's go to the next aspect of the plan. Very strong circumstantial evidence of implementation of his plans, a continuation.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Ray McQueen has not been convicted of any crime. He has always denied wrongdoing. And as you heard in the previous episode, he declared his innocence after several hours of sometimes tense questioning by Ron Blackshaw in the Bendigo Police Station in 1986.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Oh my God, I didn't do it. I had nothing to do with Rosalyn's death.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  And how did you see Donna's role?

• 6:58Speaker 06

  She was what she appeared to be, in my view, an innocent young girl. She was polite, she was reasonable, intelligent.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  In an upcoming episode, you will hear Ron Blackshaw reflect on the murder charge timing question and on this case generally. He has been following the podcast series closely. He has thought often about Roz McQueen's fate and what Ron Blackshaw sees as a failure of the criminal justice system to deliver justice to a pregnant mum. He has generously shared a lot with me for this investigation, The Poisoned Wife. You are also going to hear from the now retired forensic scientist, John Marshall, who has been similarly generous. John has powerful evidence-based ideas about Roz's murder.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  We believe that these ideas do have the potential to cause a fresh look at this case all these years later.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Now let's go back to the Friday night on which Ray McQueen was charged with murder. He was allowed to make one phone call. That was to his father, Kevin McQueen. Ray's father went to see Donna's stepfather, Alf Manalik, at Alf's house that night. Kevin McQueen went with his daughter. Donna was at home.

• 8:25Speaker 07

  I asked them if they wanted me to speak to Donna, or did they want to do it?

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Alf said that Kevin McQueen nominated his daughter as the person who should talk to Donna, and they did have a conversation.

• 8:39Speaker 07

  But I don't know what was said. I do know that Donna was very upset at the news, and she still is. In actual fact, we were all upset by the news.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Ray's father told police back then.

• 8:54Speaker 06

  My son Ray didn't murder his wife Roz, because I would swear on the Bible, anywhere in front of anyone, that there are only two men in this world who have never told me a lie, and that would be my father and my son. He said he didn't do it.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  And I believe it. Alf Manalek had overcome his disgust with Ray for having wanted Donna to move in with him so soon after Roz's death. Because Alf told police.

• 9:25Speaker 07

  I am still friends with Ray, and I hope he feels the same way.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  There must have been a lot of chat about Ray McQueen. From Bendigo to his hometown of Beulah in the Wheatbelt, you can only imagine the innuendo and gossip. A life insurance salesman accused of having cold-bloodedly killed his wife in the most unforgivable way, using the poison strychnine as his murder weapon. And all because, according to police, a married man infatuated with a teenage girl half his age no longer wants his wife, and isn't prepared to risk a costly second divorce. That's the police case, and Ray McQueen has denied it emphatically for 40 years.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  He spent the weekend in custody in Bendigo. The criminal justice system started grinding its gears on the next working day, Monday. Yvonne Dixon noted this at the time, too.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Monday, July 7, 1986, appeared in court. Mr O'Farrell said an application would be made to the Supreme Court for bail.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  Here is some of the Bendigo advertiser newspaper's report on the appearance after Ray McQueen's first three nights behind bars.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  McQueen's defence counsel, Mr Laurie O'Farrell, pleaded the insurance salesman's innocence in a brief remand hearing. McQueen was expressionless as he sat in the dock.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  My client is completely innocent of the crime. He is strong and firm in his innocence.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  The solicitor told the court that the murder charge was made hastily before the weekend.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  There is no evidence to link him to his wife's murder. He has made no admissions to police.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Magistrate Philip Byrne told the court he had few options in such matters, and he formally refused bail.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  If Yvonne Dixon had not gone into nursing, she could have been a fine reporter. She made another note based on a conversation with a trusted friend.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Wednesday, July 9, 1986. Neil said that Ray's ex-wife had changed her address in case Ray was allowed out on bail. While they were married, this ex-wife was bashed up so badly she was hospitalized three times. Detective Blackshaw said they would be making inquiries in Swan Hill, Beulah, where his father's farm was, at Warrnambool, and up to Queensland.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  The most serious criminal charge that can be levelled against a suspect, the charge of murder, didn't mean the detectives could down tools and go back to the homicide squad's HQ, an hour and a half away in Melbourne. There were many more potential witnesses, more interviews to do in the Bendigo CIB.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  On July 11, Donna's friend and cousin Sandra Manalek told police. About one month ago, Donna told me that Ray had asked her to shift out and come and live with him. Within the last two weeks, Donna came to me and told me that she loved Ray. And today, she said if he gets out of this mess, she'll go and live with him wherever he shifted to. Ray McQueen's solicitor made good on the promise that there would be an application for bail in the Supreme Court. And this unfolded in Melbourne 11 days after the murder charge.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  The court was told a pregnant Lockwood woman died from strychnine poisoning the day after she warned a teenage girl to keep away from her husband. McQueen was released on bail after the court was told his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter was suffering emotionally from the sudden absence of both parents. In an affidavit read to the Supreme Court, the Crown alleged McQueen had formed a relationship with a 17-year-old girl, and that Mrs McQueen saw the relationship as a major threat to her marriage.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  It is intriguing that the journalist who went to the hearing for the bail application wrote that Roz had asked Donna to back off and leave Ray alone some 24 hours before Roz died. In all of the evidence that we have studied, we have not seen any suggestion that Roz laid down the law like that to Donna. There is evidence from Donna that she had asked Roz if she would like Donna to stay away, and Donna's evidence was that Roz did not take up that offer, despite Roz's concerns for her marriage. Perhaps part of the bail application was misreported in July 1986.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  It's also possible that there was an error in the formal affidavit from police, which was read aloud in the court.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  The court was told McQueen was shocked and upset and told his wife not to approach the teenager. The next day, Easter Tuesday, Mrs McQueen was found slumped back in her kitchen chair after apparently eating breakfast. McQueen was allowed $2,000 bail, on the condition he live at his parents' home and report twice a week to police.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  Now, at that hearing triggered by a bail attempt in July 1986, Victoria Supreme Court was told that the position of Rosalyn's body was not consistent with the nature and cause of her death. You'll recall from episode 2 that when police and ambulance officers rushed to the Lockwood home, Roz was found slumped over a kitchen chair. Her body was bowed. Strychnine victims who end up in that bowed position are sometimes referred to as being in a London arch. And victims of strychnine poisoning die in this position after what the scientific

• 15:17Speaker 00

  and medical literature describes as violent convulsions and muscle spasms. Strychnine does this, and that's why it is such an agonizing death. Here is a reminder of what ambulance officer Kevin Davis said in his police statement. It was in episode 2.

• 15:38Speaker 06

  My immediate reaction in seeing this person in this position was that it was most unusual, and that I had not seen any such occurrence in almost 10 years on the road.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  But would someone who has undergone this shocking and uncontrollable convulsing remain balanced on a chair? Would that be an impossible scenario? Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Blackshaw was on to the possibility that Rosalyn's body was placed on the chair after she had died. Karina and I are looking closely at this idea with the help of pathologists and other experts.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  In the previous episode, Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Blackshaw asked pointed questions about Roz and cancer. Ray McQueen's emphatic rejection of cancer as a reason for Roz's sudden death must have been surprising to the detective, along with Ray's denial that he had suggested to anyone that cancer was the culprit. Because witnesses had been telling police about Ray's claims to the contrary. And according to Constable Anthony Walker, Ray named cancer as the cause of her death when Ray was at the house with his wife's body, police, and ambulance officers on the morning of April 1.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Here's a reminder of how the exchange was described in Constable Walker's police statement, part of which was in episode 2.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Have you got any idea of why your wife has passed away?

• 17:15Speaker 06

  Yes, she's had cancer.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Now, the medical files show that Roz had two pap smears, one in late November and the other two months later, January 1986. Both returned abnormal results, but those results were no cause for alarm, and later we'll explain what they meant. On June 25, the day on which Bendigo detectives told Ray that strychnine poisoning was the cause of his wife's death, Ray said that the pap smears showed positive to a cancer. He referred to what he called "the cancer finding" as something that had greatly worried his wife. But he was no longer suggesting that there was a cancer that could have caused her death.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Was Roz really worried about cancer? In reality, she had nothing to be worried about, according to her GP, Dr Neville King, and her gynaecologist, Dr Mark Jalland. They made this clear in police statements and in their evidence the following year at the inquest into Roz's death. Dr King's records show that he saw Roz at his surgery on February 11, 1986, after the second pap smear's results came back. Ray should have been under no misapprehension because he went with her to this appointment some seven weeks before her death. As Dr King told police.

• 18:47Speaker 04

  I told them there was nothing to worry about, and if anything needed to be done at all, it would be attended to when the baby was born. She seemed very happy about the prospect of the forthcoming child, and happy and contented with things in general.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Despite this, the evidence in the police brief has Ray telling neighbours, work colleagues at National Mutual Insurance, friends, and the teenager Donna Manalek, that Roz really did have cancer, and a terminal illness to worry about. Here's how the neighbour Vin McKenzie recalled one of their conversations.

• 19:25Speaker 07

  Ray told me that he mightn't have her for long, and I took that to mean she might die.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Vin said that Ray had asked Vin to please keep it to himself. Ray had said, "Don't tell anyone." Ray also told his friend Evan Doherty that Roz had cancer. Evan said in his police statement that this happened a month to six weeks before Roz's death.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  Ray had told me prior to Rosalyn's death that she was suffering from cancer. He said that she went for x-rays for the baby and found cancer. He didn't-

• 20:01Speaker 04

  Say how serious it was or what sort of cancer. He said that he was trying to upgrade Rosalind's insurance but would not be able to do it now. Even though he told me Rosalind had cancer, I was still shocked that she did because she looked so healthy.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  As with Finn McKenzie, Evan Dowdery was asked by Ray to keep this disclosure about Roz's purported cancer a secret in the vault. Ray told Evan that he was the only person he'd spoken to about the cancer and that he'd told him under strictest confidence. Donna Manalek told homicide detective Mick Furlong that Ray had spoken with her about Roz's so-called cancer. But Donna added that Roz had raised it with her too.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Roz also told me some time back that she had a small cancerous growth and it could not be treated until after the baby was born. That's as much as she said about it. She appeared to be upset when she was telling me about it.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Ray told me he was scared he was going to lose Roz with the cancer. She was going to die.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Roz was going to die, but not from cancer. And according to her family and friends, Roz was painting a very different picture. This is what Wendy Beatty, who's surname then was Hewitt, told police.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  The only complication I knew of with the pregnancy was that Rosalind told me that her doctor had told her that there was some problem arising from tests that were carried out. But she was assured by her doctor that following the birth of her child, the problem could be remedied with a 99% chance of there being no cancer present. She was not worried at all about this, so I didn't take it any further.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  The statement by Roz's mother, Joy Craig, does not mention cancer. And Roz's stepfather, Morris Craig, said.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  Rosalind had never mentioned anything to me about having cancer, or in particular, having suspected cancer of the cervix.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  Rosalind's friend Corinne Middleton from the bank told police that she bumped into her friend in the street in Bendigo about a month before her death. Corinne reflected on their meeting in her police statement.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  I noticed that she looked really good, radiant, I would say. She told me she was really happy about being cleared of any cancer in the womb. She said she felt marvellous and was having no trouble with her pregnancy.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  But at Ray's workplace of National Mutual Insurance in Bendigo, one of the sales managers, John Marr, said he was under the impression that Roz did have cancer. He told police that Ray had walked into his office one day and told him that Roz had cancer of the cervix. John said he spoke with Ray and Roz in his office in early February 1986 about Roz's pregnancy.

• 22:56Speaker 06

  Roz was visibly upset about the cancer problem, even though she said that these hurdles are sent to try us. As she was leaving, I just told her to keep her chin up and she just said everything would be all right.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  John recalled that he saw Roz twice in the fortnight before her death, and he came to the view that she was depressed. And he asked Ray to step into his office one day so that he could ask him if everything was okay with Roz.

• 23:24Speaker 06

  He said she was worried because the doctors were confusing her about whether she had cancer or not, and she was very upset with them.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  One of Rosalind's good friends from school in Swan Hill hadn't seen a lot of her in the months before Roz's death. Lisa Nolan, as she was known at the time, felt terrible about that. Lisa had her hands full with a farm, young children, and a marriage that was under strain. But six weeks after Roz died, Lisa went to Lockwood to visit Jodie and Ray. Lisa and her children stayed at Rosalind and Ray's house. Lisa gave a police statement in which she said.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  The day I got down there, he gave me the impression he was confused as to how it happened or why it happened. He told me that she had not been well, or herself, for the past three or four months. He said he would wake up at night and she would be either out of bed, sitting in the lounge room, or lying in the bed staring at the ceiling. He never asked her why, but now he wished he had. He told me she had cancer and she was very concerned about it. It was making her very depressed and she was devastated by it. My impression from what he was telling me was he was trying to convince me that she was capable of committing suicide because of her depressed state.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  What are we to make of the hearsay and direct evidence of the claims about cancer? Tom Williams, who has been a clear-eyed examiner of all the documents as a researcher in this podcast series, helping Karina Berger and me summarize the situation this way.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  By all firsthand accounts, Rosalind was never in any poor health, nor does she seem to have suggested to her friends or family that she had cancer. In many witnesses' cases, the opposite is true, that she had received a clean bill of health and had been cleared of any cancer prognoses. Both her doctor and gynaecologist were shocked and mystified by her death and could not reason any medical causes. Ray himself was present when Rosalind's doctor cleared her of any concerns about cancer. But many secondhand accounts suggest that Ray had been telling people that she was sick and had cancer, and that he was worried about losing her.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  For Tom, Karina, and me, Ray McQueen does appear to have changed his story about his wife's so-called cancer when police detectives began a major homicide investigation. That homicide investigation was triggered by the toxicology test results, which clearly showed that strychnine poisoning had killed Roz. Cancer as a cause of Roz's death was not sustainable from the time those results were confirmed in late June. Until then, nobody was even talking about strychnine. But people had been talking about a purported cancer, and they said that that was just because of what Ray had told them.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Ray McQueen did not attempt to persuade the homicide detectives that Roz had cancer. In fact, Ray made it clear during the homicide investigation that he and Roz knew very well that she did not have cancer.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  I attended Roz's funeral, and at about 4.30pm on the same day, I attended in uniform at the home of Ray McQueen's parents to pay my respects to the bereaved.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Heather Johnston befriended Roz when the two women were in hospital together in September 1983. They bonded while Roz was eagerly looking forward to the birth of her child, Jodie, back then.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Roz kept a close check on when her husband's bus would be driving past the hospital and always waved to him from our room window.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  As pregnant women, they became firm friends, and in the ensuing two years, they would catch up and exchange baby stories and milestones, as young mothers do. Heather was a senior constable in Bendigo Police when Roz died. She recalled that late on the day of the funeral, when she was at the home of Ray's parents.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  I spoke to Ray alone as I was leaving. He said that Roz had been very depressed during the pregnancy, which I found hard to believe. I later queried this with Roz's mother, Joy, who immediately said bullshit. I alluded to the fact that I felt uneasy about Ray's attitude, and she replied, "There's a lot I could say, but I won't."

• 27:56Speaker 00

  In her police statement, Heather Johnston recalled Rosalind's happiness when they spoke in late 1985.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  She was overdue a period and hoping she was pregnant. Some weeks later, she rang me at home, ecstatic to have had her pregnancy confirmed.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  A week after the funeral, Heather went to Roz and Ray's house in Lockwood to pay her respects again.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Two of Ray's friends from Redcliffs were also present, and we all chatted in the lounge room area. Ray volunteered that he only had Roz insured for about $10,000. He said something to the effect that he would have liked to have had more cover, but money was short and they didn't expect this sort of thing.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  Peter and Yvonne Dixon have fond memories of Vin McKenzie. Their old neighbour was always happy to stop and shoot the breeze. Peter told me they enjoyed regular dinners together. His wife enjoyed Vin's easygoing company. Vin wasn't a young man when he walked into the kitchen and discovered the body of Roz McQueen. He shouldn't even have been there.

• 29:26Speaker 06

  Ray went to work and then rang Vin up to say, "Could you please go and check on her?" So when he went to check on her, he found her dead.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  The police detective, Ron Blackshaw, had put it to Ray that he knew his wife was already dead and Ray McQueen had emphatically denied that. The police suspected that Ray's antics were a ruse to build an alibi.

• 29:54Speaker 06

  But her little girl, who was a very small toddler, said, "Mummy's dead, Vin." A little girl like that, I don't know whether you'd know what dead was, which was really weird.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Peter and Yvonne said Vin was deeply troubled by all of it. A young mother's body beside the kitchen table, her toddler, Jodie, nearby, baby talking something about mummy being dead. Later, when he was implicated in Roz's death by Ray, Vin McKenzie was stunned and shaken.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Poor old Vin, he went to the grave a broken-hearted man, shocking things. That hurt him.

• 30:38Speaker 06

  Because Vin was an old man, he was on his own. He'd been on his own for a long time. He was a great neighbour and...

• 30:45Speaker 01

  It was a Friday night, he bred two chickens, made a trio together. That's what he was like.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  And then Ray made claims about where the poison might have come from.

• 30:55Speaker 06

  And you got the blame.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Rex Bakes spoke up.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  That's what he implied. He tried to insinuate that Vin had strychnine, so that would have been where Roz got it from.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  Rex shared his knowledge of the lethality of the poison.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  You could stand a match on one end and sprinkle strychnine on it and it would form a cone on the top and that would be enough to polish off people.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  Rex, we're all sitting here talking about something that you were first involved in when you were actually working for Ray McQueen's lawyers.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's such a relief to me that at last, after all these years heading my head on a brick wall, we're making progress. Persistence pays. I know our teams, including Peter and Yvonne, have done our best and that's all we can do.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  I asked Peter Dixon about the part of Ray McQueen's version to police in which he threw blame at Vin McKenzie. You'll recall that Ray claimed to police that he was told by Peter Dixon of an encounter after Vin's tractor and rotary hoe were borrowed by Peter. The tractor's power shaft hit something while Peter was driving around the cherry trees. According to the version told by Ray McQueen, Peter had described a heated exchange with Vin and then a warning purportedly from Vin that he had strychnine and could use it against his neighbours. Was it a significant conflict?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't a big deal, no.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Did you ever feel threatened by him?

• 32:44Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  I read aloud one of Ray McQueen's answers to detectives, senior sergeant Ron Blackshaw. Peter came down and told me that Vin McKenzie had told them that he had got enough strychnine up there to do a lot of damage.

• 33:04Speaker 06

  He's really thrown it at Vin.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  But did you say the things he says you said?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 33:11Speaker 06

  No.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Do you believe that he had strychnine?

• 33:15Speaker 01

  No. Man, Vin was a really wonderful neighbour to us.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Was that in Vin's character to do that?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Did Vin McKenzie ever say to you that he had enough poison or strychnine to wipe people out?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  No, no. That's bullshit. Lies.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  And you told the police then that too? Because I've read your statement, that it was a lie.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  The Dixons knew and liked Vin a lot, but they knew Ray about as well as a bar of soap.

• 33:48Speaker 06

  It wasn't a very friendly relationship at tennis either because he'd come and he'd go off with her. We wouldn't drop in for a coffee or anything with Ray. And when it all came out in the papers, I'm thinking, "That's our neighbour and we know what he's done."

• 34:03Speaker 00

  But he has always denied it. He's always said, "I had nothing to do with it."

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Vin McKenzie had nothing to do with it, I'm telling you that. I know that for a fact. He kind of went with murder. That's what I'm concerned about.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  In my first phone call with Rex four years ago, soon after he had sent his suitcase of documents, he spoke of the friendships that he had forged while investigating this case over a long time.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  I've endeavoured to keep in contact with these people and make them aware of the fact that I truly appreciate what they've done for me. That's the way country people are. They're very straight people.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  In his letters and in our chats, Rex spoke often of his gratitude for those who helped him look into Roz's murder. But I still didn't understand what had made Rex so obsessive. After Ray McQueen beat a murder charge, what was the catalyst for Rex to pursue him with unusual zeal? Rex hinted at part of the answer while talking to Debbie Weegard, who used to play tennis with Ray McQueen and the teenager, Donna.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  And doing the work I did, I developed relationships with people in various areas. And one day, I called him to see one of those informants of mine and there was a lightbulb moment.

• 35:34Speaker 06

  Where was he?

• 35:36Speaker 01

  In Bendigo. Yeah, he was a Bendigo bloke.

• 35:39Speaker 06

  Did he take an interest in this case too, though?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Well, he was part of the story, actually, from very early days. Unknowingly, he assisted McQueen's first wife in leaving the marital home.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Okay. Rex Bakes is talking about Alan Strawn, once a near neighbour of Ray and Jeanette McQueen. Jeanette's harrowing account of violence in the marriage was featured in episode four. In our temporary base on Bendigo's View Street, we talked about what Jeanette described in her sworn statement to police. I believe her testimony about him being violent towards her...

• 36:24Speaker 01

  You've just got to ask Alan Strawn. His words were, "She looked like she was in fear of her life."

• 36:30Speaker 00

  And that, right there, was the lightbulb moment for Rex, the catalyst. It was Alan Strawn sharing his observation of a terrified Jeanette many years ago. Rex didn't know about Jeanette's evidence at the inquest. In 1987, Rex had been treated like a mushroom. And like other cases he'd worked on as a private investigator, he had moved on. He'd put it behind him. But after Alan Strawn shared what he saw in Jeanette, Ray McQueen's life would not be the same again. That was a sliding door moment. After Alan said what he said to Rex,

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Rex started pursuing Ray relentlessly. And Rex now reckons it was karma.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Bashing up his first wife... You bash up your first wife, doesn't make you a murderer. Doesn't help either.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  We needed to go and talk to Alan Strawn. Why don't we go and see him tomorrow?

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Where's the tyres at?

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Where is he?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  He's just out of town.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  Oh, there's an number here for Alan. I've just found one in one of Rex's letters. Rex was opposed to telephoning ahead, another no-no in the private investigator's handbook. Calling ahead gives people an excuse to say, "No, not interested." "For warned," Rex keeps telling Karina Berger and me, "is four-armed."

• 38:06Speaker 01

  What if he knocks us back? You're buggered, you see. You turn up, you got half a show of... I hate telling people I'm coming.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Rex recalled that when he was working for Ray's defence team in 1987, Ray's father, Kevin, and Ray's mother, Beryl, were espousing a theory that Roz had not even died from strychnine.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  I remember talking to Mr and Mrs McQueen outside the back door of their house, a singer named Beryl. She said, "Oh, there's got to be a mix-up. Samples of strychnine wouldn't have been taken from Roz. There was some Asian woman who those samples would have come from. There's been a mix-up." That's what she said.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Rex slowed his four-wheel drive alongside one of Alan Strawn's sheds on his rural property outside Bendigo. Another rusting car chassis was resting in peace nearby. Karina and I stayed seated while Rex went to Alan's back door. One thing Rex said to me over lunch, "This is what I really miss as an investigator, meeting great people." Yeah. He's doing this great big kind of walk down memory lane as well. Doing a lot of reminiscing. Yeah, it's pretty important to him, isn't it? So many cars here. They must be home. I know, you'd think so. I don't see any blinds twitching.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Or anything.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  I would say there's a very good chance they lose it.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Have you knocked on the door?

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've bashed on the door.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  And so he supports Jeanette's story of violence.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  It's been glossed over.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  We can discover all that if Alan will talk to us. And I think he will because he's an approachable bloke.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Rex drove us back to Alan's property a little later, and we got a warm welcome.

• 40:06Speaker 06

  You're allowed to come in. It's a bit of a bachelor pad.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Alan, what I'd like you to do is just cast your mind back to that day that you apparently saw something that really troubled you. Tell me what it was.

• 40:22Speaker 06

  When I was out in the backyard tinkering around out in the shed, and this woman put her head over the back fence. And she called me down and she said, I need to get out of here. I've got to go. I've got to get out now. But my husband's locked the gate with a padlock. And I said to her, well, if I cut the padlock off the gate for you. It wasn't me, sort of thing, you know what I mean?

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 06

  Anyway, I just grabbed some bolt cutters, jumped the fence, cut the lock off the gate. Clunk, off the lock went. She was scared and she was like, come on, quick, I've got to get out of here now. The car was behind the lock gate. That's why she wanted the lock off the gate so she could get the car out. She was terrified, that woman, I can tell you right now. She looked in fear of her life. She did look really, really troubled. She was nervous and fearful, look in her eyes. And she was very, very grateful. She drove me out the gate, just took off.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  And that was Jeanette McQueen?

• 41:20Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  They were your neighbours?

• 41:23Speaker 06

  Over the back fence, straight over the back fence.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  But you weren't that neighbourly?

• 41:27Speaker 06

  No, I found him a bit...

• 41:30Speaker 06

  Look, I said hello, but you couldn't engage in conversation with him or anything. I haven't spoken to anyone about it except Rex.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  With a nod to his longtime acquaintance, Alan commented.

• 41:44Speaker 06

  You're pretty relentless, I know. Like a dog with a bone, he was. Snooping around and going through all the evidence and sending it to the police department, trying to get them to reopen the case and stuff like that. What I've told you, I've never told the police. The police have never been here or anything, too.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  When my colleague Liam Mendez spoke to Ray McQueen in Melbourne at the start of this podcast series, Ray suggested that a forensic laboratory screw-up had caused strychnine to be wrongly identified as Roslyn's cause of death. Alan Straw knows that this idea is still circulated by some of the McQueen family relations in Bendigo.

• 42:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, give us a break. Come on. Who are you kidding?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Ray's mother said similar things to me.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  Alan had never met Ray's second wife, Roz. But Alan discovered that he was related to the young woman from Swan Hill.

• 42:44Speaker 06

  When I was looking right into the whole case, I found out that myself and her would have a bit of the same DNA. She was probably a 47 cousin 29 times removed or something, you know? Ah, blood relative there. So that got me a little bit more intrigued.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  And like many old timers in Bendigo, he has puzzled over why the case never went to trial.

• 43:11Speaker 06

  When she died and then the police actually arrested him, I thought, oh, it's a done deal. I can't for the life of me see why it was abandoned. I cannot understand that. That's just not what you'd do, is it? There was no evidence at the scene. There was no container of strychnine or any container that had any trace of strychnine in it. Where would that be? You'd think that'd be on the table or on the floor or something, wouldn't you?

• 43:36Speaker 00

  So if she was committing suicide, why would she hide her own method?

• 43:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's ridiculous. He got her in the ground as quick as he could.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Karina and I have wondered about this suggestion. Because these days, a funeral usually occurs one to two weeks after a death. Roz died on a Tuesday. She was buried at Kangaroo Flat on a Friday. That's three days. But to be fair to Ray, it was not uncommon for a service and burial to be done in three to five days in the 1980s in regional Australia. Alan is a collector of antique furniture, cars and vintage motorcycles. He can pull the machines apart and put them back together bolt by bolt.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  A gleaming 1968 Vela Set Thruxton motorcycle stands proudly, if bizarrely, because it's not in Alan's shed. It's in his lounge room.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  It looks very clean.

• 44:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, I assembled it all, painted it.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  You're an engineer, or?

• 44:46Speaker 06

  Backyard engineer. That's all I do is build my own bikes.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  As we were leaving, Karina asked about an antique sideboard.

• 44:55Speaker 06

  This is Cheffernia, imported from the UK that one. It's about 1860. The ones in Australia are mainly cedar or human pine.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, wow.

• 45:04Speaker 06

  Most beautiful thing you'll ever see.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  They make stuff like that anymore?

• 45:08Speaker 06

  No, they don't.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Later, parked outside Roz and Ray's old house, Karina and I pressed Rex again about his motivation. Alan Straw's disclosures to Rex years ago had helped us understand some of the pursuit, but not all of it. Why have you been so concerned about this case?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  I wasn't allowed to be an investigator.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  And that sticks in my gut.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Do you mean that you weren't given enough freedom to investigate Ray's defence in the way that you would have liked to?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Yes. I just feel that I was set up to fail right from the start. Whereas all the other cases I had, I was given a file and bid farewell. And why not this time?

• 46:07Speaker 03

  So Rex, over the years, have you been doing the wide-ranging investigation that you would have liked to have done back in 1987?

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Yes, it just had to be done. And so I just set about doing it and leaving my wife at home to run the business. Goodness knows how many miles I've driven, how many days I've been away from home. But still, the urge remained and remains to this day to see this through.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  Nobody's paid you?

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Not a cent.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Do you accept that it's professionally unusual for you to have originally worked for Ray McQueen? And then you become an investigator trying to get evidence that would possibly cause him to be prosecuted for the murder?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  That is unusual, but then on the other hand, I'm an investigator. And I've got to proceed without favour or fear to get the facts to present on.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  With the help of a local farmer, Rex went looking again for a farm that he first visited in 1987, when Rex was working with Ray McQueen's legal defence team in an effort to beat the charge of murder. In an earlier episode, Rex spoke of going to the farm to take a statement from a couple and then being shown strychnine in a tin in the shed. The couple Rex visited that day spoke to him about the visit that they'd had from Ray and Roz several weeks before she died. Rex has long speculated that the strychnine which killed Roz was sourced during the visit that she and Ray made to that farm.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  But despite all of his driving over the years in an area near Galloquill, Rex could not find that farm again, and he couldn't remember the surname of the farming couple. Until perhaps now. As a result of reading some of the police brief of evidence which we shared with Rex, he believes that the farmer he spoke to was Norman Woods, the father of Ray's first wife, Jeanette. When Rex went by the Woods farm recently, it looks similar to the one he had visited back in 1987. Rex believes that Ray McQueen visited his former parents-in-law on the farm with Roz shortly before her death.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  And that somehow Ray was able to help himself to some strychnine without Mr. Woods knowing.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  We go down where that truck came from.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  Yep, go left.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  Well, if you're hunching right, it's possible that he left behind a print or even trace DNA.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  I have thought about that.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, but let me be devil's advocate.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Ray's first wife, Jeanette, gives some very damaging evidence against him.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  His allegedly cruel behaviour, threats to hurt her, actual harm done. Why would Ray want to rely on his first wife's parents for alibi and to help him?

• 49:27Speaker 03

  The statement that Jeanette's father, Norman Woods, made that's in the police brief is really scathing of Ray. So I have a bit of a problem with this theory that it was the Woods farm. But the other thing too is that if... Say the jar of strychnine is there and it has Ray's DNA on it, fingerprints, some forensic sort of evidence. Well, wouldn't his defence team just say, of course it does, he was married to the daughter of the couple who owned this farm and he must have touched that tin when he came here for some legitimate trip. And then Norman Woods, in his statement, he doesn't talk about any visit by Ray and

• 50:12Speaker 03

  Roz in the lead up to her death.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Okay. You just wonder why would Mr and Mrs Woods host their former son-in-law when they know their daughter is alleging that he put her through hell?

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Well, I think the only reason they would, perhaps, is to see their grandkids.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  I said, why is the Strickton up there? And he said, I have grandchildren and they mustn't get anywhere near Strickton.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  Rex looks relaxed when he's on the open road and in charge of his four-wheel drive, but he isn't always a stickler for the rules.

• 50:51Speaker 06

  You're old school, you don't need indicators, do you Rex?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Quite enough entry.

• 50:57Speaker 00

  Karina and I reread the police statement of Norman Woods. In episode three, you heard Ray's assertion to police that one of the reasons for the failure of the first marriage was due to his then-wife Jeanette purportedly funneling Ray's money to Jeanette's father, Norman. But Norman Woods rejected this claim in his statement.

• 51:21Speaker 06

  During the years they were married, Jeanette never gave me any money to invest on her behalf. I have given her some money to help her out and make ends meet. Since first meeting Ray, I found him to be abusive towards Jeanette. I did feel very sorry for her at times by his treatment.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  Norman Woods recalled a time when he was asked by Ray for money.

• 51:46Speaker 06

  Ray told me that his father and uncle were selling out and that he wanted to buy some of their land to add to his, which would give him a viable farm. I informed him that I could lend him $17,000 to $19,000. He informed me that it would not be enough. After this, all the land was sold and they moved to Bendigo to live. Ray was very disappointed in having to sell their land. I remember one evening, I was invited over by Kevin, Ray's father, and he explained it was a most urgent matter. I went around and Kevin told me that Ray had found a high-powered rifle, hidden amongst Jeanette's clothing, and ammunition hidden in the kitchen.

• 52:29Speaker 06

  I later discovered that Ray had been lying to his father and me about the rifle. On the same night, Ray told me in front of his father that the first few years of marriage to Jeanette was not too bad, but she had made him do the most humiliating, crawling, degrading thing in his life. He went on to say that that was when she made him come to me to borrow money to buy the land. I later discovered this to be a lie. I suspect that the reason for these lies by Ray was so that his father would accept Ray's rejection of Jeanette. As far as I was concerned, Ray's lies were to obtain his father's blessing for when he left Jeanette and openly took up with Roz.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  Now, you've previously heard how Ray's mother, Beryl McQueen, was dismissive 40 years ago of the evidence that strychnine had killed Roz. Beryl McQueen told Rex Bakes that there must have been a mix-up with the results of an unnamed Asian woman. And at the start of this podcast series, Ray McQueen told my colleague Liam Mendez in Melbourne that he suspected there had been a laboratory stuff-up. Ray also suggested that Roz had heart disease. In Ray's words, she had, and I'll quote the words exactly here, "A lot of fat around her heart and inflammation around her heart."

• 53:56Speaker 00

  Ray said he was told that Roz died of a massive heart attack and not from strychnine poisoning. Ray discounted that scientific finding because someone else had told Ray not to trust the toxicology tests which identified strychnine in her organs, her stomach, blood and urine. That's why Ray suggested that those results could have been the product of what he called a "monumental forensic science stuff-up." Karina has been looking at the coronial files closely. The coroner's court asked the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine to review the original autopsy report.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  The advice that came back was that Rosalind McQueen's heart was in fact normal. The autopsy report confirmed that her heart was of normal weight and appearance. There was no excess fat around the heart or in the heart muscle. Nothing like that was noted. The pathologist did indeed determine that the cause of death was strychnine poisoning. Forensic laboratory stuff-ups are not unheard of. We've seen them in Queensland's DNA testing laboratory, which came into sharp focus in our podcast, Shandy's Story, and its sequel, Shandy's Legacy. But we cannot see anything amiss in the toxicological testing done as a result of Roz McQueen's

• 55:22Speaker 00

  death. Police statements from April 1986 describe the careful handling of the blood and the tissue and the organ samples after an autopsy in Bendigo the day before her funeral. Senior Constable Peter Savage took the samples to the coroner's court's state chemistry laboratory for testing there. The results were published in black and white. The toxicologist at the laboratory in Melbourne, Norman Ellis, testified that he received specimens from Roz McQueen's liver, stomach, blood, urine, brain, ileum and amniotic fluid.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  Claims that Roz died because there was something congenitally wrong with her heart are false. Tragically, strychnine ended her life and that of her unborn baby in the most agonising way imaginable. In the next episode of The Poisoned Wife.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  He told me that one of his friends had overheard the police the day Roz was found say to another copper, "I don't know if he's done it, but I'm going to get this bastard for this."

• 56:41Speaker 00

  The Poisoned Wife is investigated and written by me, Hedley Thomas, and Karina Berger. Police statements and some other material have been voice-acted in the episodes in this podcast series. Anyone with information about the death of Rosalind McQueen can contact me confidentially at [email protected]. Our editorial director is Claire Harvey. Audio production for The Poisoned Wife is by Wasabi Audio and Slade Gibson.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Special thanks to Tom Williams, Sean Callanan, Andy Taylor, Greg Brown, Rowan Williams, Brittany English and the content division, Adelaide Kennedy, Tarnie Stroat, Sophie Renee, Liam Mendez, Sarah Elks, Erica Rutledge, Lydia Lynch, Chloe Barr, John Paul Cashin, Will Sitem, Liliana Molina, Lara Caminos, Suze Rolfe, Chantelle Love, Patrick McKee, Byron Wilder, Stefania Di Nicola, Cushy Chandani, Jonathan Bahame, Lachlan Clear, Harry Hughes, Milan Skapamovic, Rex Bakes and Wendy Beatty. And of course, to The Australian's editor-in-chief, Michelle Gunn, and the editor Kelvin Healy

• 58:10Speaker 00

  for affording us the time and resources to tackle these important stories.